Barbara Sehr has a steady algorithm that dances to a different aerial density. OK, she's a funny technical writer who brings out her recently diminished profile, her artificial intelligence, and her native German sense of humor. Despite all that, she is not only funny — she is the only known journalist to interview Bill Gates as both a male and female reporter. Visit her Web site: www.liftingthefog.com

“Littering” Lives: A Crime Against Human Nature

One of my deepest educational moments in journalism did not occur in semester hours of J-School, but in the opening hours of my first cub reporting job at a major metropolitan newspaper in Los Angeles. More than three decades ago, I worked as a police reporter on the graveyard shift at the LA police headquarters, covering the happenings in law enforcement. Amidst the many bumps in the night, there were serious crimes going on — each recorded in a register available to all those on the beat. Serious crimes included such common big city events like rape and armed robbery. There was also the too common “187,” California legislative code for the crime of murder. Over my first days as a reporter, I puzzled about a hyphenated comment next to “187,” the word “littering.”

“Littering…” was not a word I expected to see next to the most serious violation one human can inflict upon another. Yet, I was soon told that the word was used to describe a brutal shooting of a young Compton black woman by her angry boyfriend, or — in rare cases — the reverse. The description was meant to cheapen this all-too-common crime, and let reporters focus on more serious matters, like the brutal shooting of a Beverly Hills woman by her angry boyfriend — or the reverse.
Some lives are just cheap. A decade later, I was a reporter in the San Francisco area, when San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was given a slap on the finger in local courts upon his conviction of “voluntary manslaughter” in the murder of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. Thousands took to the streets of San Francisco to protest what the world considered a travesty of justice. Each year, a candlelight vigil on Castro Street served to remember the senseless shootings, while the toll of senseless deaths related to the mounting AIDS crisis also served to cheapen a community still in mourning.
This week, I will attend a very different candlelight vigil at the University of Washington. The vigil mourns the loss of life in one of the last communities still widely seen as without value. This Friday is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is a day all too close to home for me. It began a decade ago, not only to mark the brutal murder of one Boston-area trans woman, Rita Hester, it means to honor the lives of hundreds of people murdered because they broke through the world’s gender barriers. Being a Trans person remains dangerous in America and around the world. More than 300 Trans people have died in the United States just in this year. Thousands have died around the world — most of them discounted by a society that finds us without value, and most of these slayings unsolved by law enforcement unconcerned by crimes against the unvalued. The hatred that put a bullet into Martin Luther King, the hatred that marked sufferers of AIDS as the victims of their own “lifestyle,” is no different from the hatred that kills folks who dare to violate gender barriers all over the world.
This Friday, the University of Washington’s Q Center presents its traditional Candlelight Vigil at 6 pm. The vigil will be held at Montlake Blvd NE and NE Pacific, at the campus entry stairs across from the UW Medical Center. At noon, the Q Center hosts a “die-in” in Red Square to mark the deaths of the many innocents who have become deadly targets because of their gender expression. The public — at least those of you who don’t maintain a value system for certain lives — are invited to be a part of this demonstration.
Just last month, President Obama finally signed the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act into law. The new legislation adds sexual orientation and gender identity to existing federal hate crimes. But laws are only the beginning. What’s needed is education. That’s why I have worked hard in my own public speaking and in my own comedic bits on stages around North America to educate the world that we are just as much fun as any community beyond Leave it to Beaver celebrated in the American sitcom.
Ignorance is the primary cause of hate crimes against our community, just as it was against the gay and lesbian community in the days before Will & Grace… I have great faith in the generation that is just now emerging into adult responsibility. It gives me hope that not only will littering be diminished as a crime against our environment; it will be diminished as a crime against any group of people.